


Not Alone

by reanimatrix



Series: Revolution [2]
Category: Dragon Age 2
Genre: Allusion to Rape, F/M, slight AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-10-23
Updated: 2011-11-23
Packaged: 2017-10-24 21:13:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reanimatrix/pseuds/reanimatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel of sorts to "All Mine". Response to prompt on the kinkmeme:"Anders' LI is not only aware of the plan to start a revolution/outright war, but is actually right there on the barricades with him."</p><p>Still terrified by Ser Alrik's actions and the Chantry's blind eye to them years after the events of the quest "Dissent", Veena Hawke decides Something Must Be Done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

She couldn’t get Alrik and Ella out of her head. It had all worked out in the end, sure, but what if they hadn’t gotten there in time? What if she had chosen not to believe Anders? What if she and Anders had never come to Kirkwall?

Alrik could have done anything he’d wanted to that little girl. Sure, Elthina had vetoed the Tranquil Solution as a whole, but neither she nor Meredith had actually done anything to stop him from going ahead and doing it anyway.

And she just felt... she had come into that room and she knew that he wanted to make her tranquil for a very specific reason. She shuddered, staring at the wall.

“Are you all right, love?” Anders asked her sleepily, opening one eye.

“Yeah, just can’t sleep... I’m going down to get some tea and see if that helps, did you want anything?” she asked. She didn’t feel like bringing up an event that happened years ago, particularly not when he had bad memories attached to it for reasons different than her own.

“No, I’m fine... are you sure you’re okay?” he looked at her, his brow furrowed, more awake now and worried, “it’s really late.”

Veena nodded.

“You know me,” she said with a little smile, “I can never sleep. And there was a draft,” she added, knowing it had been her movement that had woken him up.

“Mmm, you should check to make sure the windows are closed,” he muttered.

“I will. You go back to sleep.”

Peaceful sleep was such a rare thing for him, and it really wasn’t fair. At least he didn’t realize that not sleeping for her meant thinking, brooding, replaying scenes in her head.

The predatory way he stood over the little girl, the look of absolute terror in her eyes...

Justice nearly killing Ella didn’t bother her. She had been able to stop him, and she knew, unlike Anders, that she would be able to stop him again. She did not fear Justice.

She feared Alrik. She had understood, at that point, why Templars were so terrifying, why they must absolutely be destroyed without any hesitation.

Sometimes she wondered if even Anders understood that. She knew that Justice did; probably better than even she did, but Anders was a healer, and the world did not currently need healing. It needed breaking. It needed to be destroyed and put back together properly, like a bone that healed crooked. The Tevinter Imperium and its slavery had broken it, and Andraste, the stupid fraud, had attempted to heal it, but only made it crooked, just as broken as before but even harder to fix. She hoped she was rotting in the Void for being a bloody liar.

Throw one group under the fire for the sake of another. What a lovely woman.

Good thing Veena Hawke excelled at destruction.

They had to declare absolute war, if anything was going to be fixed, if monsters like Alrik were going to be prevented from preying on girls like Ella. Like Bethany had been, or like Veena herself. She padded down the stairs and started getting the tea ready, thinking about this, staring at the fire and pondering. She shuddered again as her mind replaced Ella with Bethany, and gnawed on a finger nail.

No, something had to be done, and it wasn’t going to be done by the Grand Cleric and certainly not by the Knight Commander. They didn’t care, she suspected the Grand Cleric not only didn’t care, but encouraged things like this subtly, silently.

Petrice, Alrik; had been her puppets, easily discarded, her hands left clean. This woman was dangerous, the most dangerous enemy. Even Meredith was only her puppet, easily discarded if she ever became inconvenient. Everyone would continue to think of Elthina as a sweet old lady, harmless and benign.

She certainly had Sebastian in her trap. There was one person they couldn’t count on, ever. Better to keep him close, the better to watch him. Maker, she was already thinking in conspiracies, and she didn’t even know what they were. Subtlety was not Veena's art at all, and this was going to be difficult. Difficult, but absolutely necessary, like all things worth doing. She heard that in her father's voice. She sighed.

The dog wandered over and nosed at her in concern, ever alert to her moods, and Veena reached down and scratched behind her ears, her mind still lost in thought. She scratched in irritation at the cloth over the long scar down her torso-- it was in the last stages of healing, the skin pink and itchy. If Anders had seen her, he would have chastised her, like a child, and she would have scowled and pretended to scratch harder just to be contrary.

The kettle whistled, bringing her back to the real world, and she sighed, poured a cup of boiling water, stuffed tea leaves into the strainer, and then shoved the thing in the cup, avoiding the water that overflowed onto the counter. She stared at it, because she knew she’d forget about it otherwise. The dog whined and she shushed it. Bodahn, Anders, Moth--Sandal were all sleeping. Porkchop looked apologetic, tilting her head.

She stared at her dog, furrowing her brow. Something had to be done, but what? Killing Elthina-- that would only be turned against them, wouldn’t it? Same with the death of Meredith, it would be used as proof of the inherent evilness and corruption of mages. No, it had be an actual act of war.


	2. Through You or Around You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Veena Convinces Anders to let her help with the mage underground. A young mage is rescued, things are learned.

Anders woke up to a pair of big, yellow-brown eyes staring at him. It actually caused him to jump, and she laughed at him, much to his annoyance. He rolled his eyes at her.

“Can I help you?” he asked sleepily, a little concerned, but not surprised, by how energetic she was for the morning. He should be used to this. Her energy was a little worrying the entire day, actually. The only times it wasn’t at all worrying was---

“I want to get involved in the mage underground,” she said, and just like that, she veered his attention away from the best high energy Veena Hawke times, much to Justice’s silent but very tangible satisfaction.

YES. Justice, or he, or both of them thought. Though he did not approve of his groin’s feelings for Veena, Justice had always liked Veena’s intensity, her zeal, the way she went about things all the way or not at all. He did not approve of the lust, but he approved of her as a friend and associate, because she cared about justice, in every form. And maybe he was a little attached to her too.

“No.” He said firmly. It was too dangerous, and he could not risk her. He’d nearly lost her to the Arishok, had barely managed to keep her, he was not going to lose her to anything else.

Not even to the benefit of mages? To changing this terrible world, where children got ripped away from their parents, where people’s minds got destroyed? Not even to bring those people justice?

No. There was a limit, a limit that Justice HAD to understand--

“Fuck you. That was not a ‘can I pretty please get involved in the mage underground, ser?’ that was a get me involved in the mage underground or I will get myself involved around you,” she snarled.

He could feel Justice... smirking, a terrible self-satisfied smugness inside him, turned towards him, the two of them working against him, and he rolled away from her violently, rolling off the bed. It was too early for this, but it was never too early for anything with Veena and it drove him mad.

“You... I couldn’t bear to lose you,” he said, trying to reason with her, pleading, “particularly not for something that you’d be doing for me.”

“For you? For -you-?” she sounded incredulous, and he winced a little, “Anders, I love you, more than anything alive except my best friend, my brother and my dog, but this is not for you.”

He tilted his head at her in disbelief, probably looking as skeptical as he felt from the livid look her face took on.

“Anders, quit being so self-centered, damn it. I’m a mage. My father was a mage. My sister was a mage-- that little girl, remember? The one that disgusting dog turd Alrik wanted to turn tranquil? That could have been my little sister-- she looked like her even, that could have been Bethany, Anders, Maker, don’t you think I have more of an investment in this than your cock?”

He winced, at her bluntness and at the fact that, as Justice all too cheerfully pointed out, she was absolutely right.

“That was harsh,” she said with a sigh, running a hand through her white hair and flopping on the bed, “but... the mage underground isn’t something you can keep from me. It’s... important to me for a lot of reasons. I know, I know that I have it well-- I’m the Champion of Kirkwall, it’ll be awfully hard for the templars to touch me.”

“But that doesn’t mean you don’t want to help those that aren’t as fortunate, right?” he asked with a frown. He should have known. He did know. He just hoped... that if he never made the suggestion to her that she would never have the idea herself. Veena went out of her way to help mages-- Feynriel, the escapees from Starkhaven, the way she went out of her way to frame dangerous Templars. There had been a part of him that thought that she was doing all of that because of his influence.

No, he realized, he should have known all along, that she was doing it because she understood it was the right thing to do. Because she was just as passionate about all this as he was, and she didn’t have Justice to give her her passion and drive, and that was truly why he loved her as much as he did, and he wanted nothing more right now than to kiss her.

He had done her a great injustice, Justice pointed out, assumed that she was shallow, a little girl who wanted to impress the handsome dangerous rebel, when she was just as dangerous as he. He ignored the niggling guilt the spirit poked him with and laid back down the bed next to her, kissing her cheek.

“Don’t try to distract me,” she growled, but she didn’t move away from him, if anything she wiggled closer, turned her head to look him in the eye, and kissed him deeply. When she broke the kiss she nibbled on his lip a little, still looking at him in the eye.

“This is my right, and you will not keep me from it. I do not want to go around you, but if I have to... please, please don’t make me.” she said, quietly, urgently, and Andraste’s-- of course his mind was going to inappropriate feminine body parts! Justice be damned he was still a man, and the woman he loved kissing him like that and then using that tone of voice did things to him that the spirit just had no power over. The most he could do was disapprove, and right now, Justice was in accordance with Veena. It was not Anders’ right to keep her from making the choice of joining the mage underground, at all.  
“All right,” he said, giving in, defeated, “but you have to promise to be careful,” he said.

“I’ll be as careful as you are,” she replied, kissing him again, with that same intensity that she put into everything, “we can do everything together-- so I won’t lose you, and you won’t lose me, does that work for you?”

Anything would work for him right now, considering, so long as it’d lead to one thing, much to Justice’s frustration, but what did the spirit expect to happen, after living in his body for so long, when she kissed him like that?

She was so close to him that she could feel the moist head of his cock poking through that wonderfully convenient slit in his smalls and pressing up against her leg and she laughed, rubbing her thigh against it like the wonderful, amazing, beautiful, evil, _evil_ monster that she was.

“I’ll be fair and ask again after we’re done,” she said with a laugh and rolled over so that she was on top of him, grinning down at him. Maker, she was terrifying, and he loved her for it. She already knew what the answer would be. She was just rubbing it in his face now, and as long as she was willing to rub her face in certain of his body parts he was okay with that. From the way she was sliding down he could tell that she was, too.

Two (three for her) amazing orgasms later, he held her close and buried his nose in her hair. It smelled sweet, like spices imported from Antiva and Rivain. He knew she liked to bathe in them, sometimes he accompanied her, and he could not disassociate the smell, particularly the sharp smell of oranges, from her. Her white hair was thick and soft, one of his favorite things about her.

She sighed contently, seeming, for a few glorious moments, at peace and appeased. But it wasn’t two minutes before she turned to him and grinned excitedly, never being one to really bask in the afterglow.

“So, next time you’re going to do something for the mage underground, you’re bringing me along, right?” she asked eagerly, and all he could really do was nod.

~

The tunnels were dark and damp and smelled just like every damp, dark place ever. Anders brought Veena here for a reason, and the reason was that he wanted her to really understand what the Mage Underground was all about. Veena had been in these before, of course, she and all their other friends practically had the tunnels memorized, but today it was just her and Anders. That would probably make her more aware of what she was getting herself involved in.

The mage underground was by necessity a very lonely group. It’s members did not truly know one another. There were no meetings, and all communications were thickly coded and hidden in secret places, never alluding to any of the people in it. Strict measures were taken to ensure that if one got caught, not even tranquility would make one give away other members of it. Secrecy was key, and though Anders was absolutely convinced of Veena’s loyalty and her commitment, he hated to admit it, even to himself, but he worried about her ability to keep quiet.  
She wouldn’t talk on purpose, never, but she tended to speak without thinking, and it worried him.

“Which way?” she whispered to him, and by the impatience in her voice, they had been at the fork for a while.

He needed to stay alert. You never knew when the templars would figure out about this tunnel and refuse to be bought with Lyrium. Often it did the job, even in spite of the Templars themselves, but you never knew when they’d decide that the power trip was better than the Lyrium one.

But Veena-- she as being a far worse distraction right now than she ever was when Justice didn’t approve of it. He could sense, however, that Justice disagreed with that line of thought and again thought he was being unfair to the short, white haired mage. She could take care of herself, just as well as he could take care of himself.

“Right,” he whispered, taking her elbow in his arm and turning her the right way. She nodded and slid out of his grasp, leaning her head forward, moving quickly.

This was not the Veena he was used to, this was not even the Veena he saw when they were out doing ‘jobs’ as Veena liked to call them. She was usually talkative, cheerful, odd, and even (dare he think it?) a little annoying sometimes.

This Veena was focused, and while he had thought her incapable of it, to see it in her was a little unnerving. She had been completely silent except when asking for directions, a tiny magelight at the tip of her finger and her staff the only things she was using to know what was ahead of them.

She understood the importance, Justice thought, the gravity of what they were doing. She was admirable. It was a shame more people were not like her, there would not be so many injustices in the world if more people were willing to do something about them, had that kind of passion and drive.

She was going to get herself killed, Anders thought, and that was hardly admirable and he did not want to see it happen to his Hawke. That was why more people did not have that kind of drive, because that kind of drive got you killed. It was going to get him killed too, but he would have preferred not to take Hawke with him. He loved her too much for that. She deserved better.

That itself was an injustice, the murdering of just people, Justice pointed out.

He needed to focus on getting to the opening to the bottom of the tower in the Gallows, Anders retorted, and that got the spirit to stop thinking for a moment, or at least let him focus their thoughts on the task at hand. They were getting close.

“Stop” he whispered, and instantly she stopped, so quickly, actually, that he nearly walked into her and felt slightly sheepish. She looked at him, turning out the magelight, so that he could only see her outline in the dark.

“This will lead into the lowest level in the tower,” he explained, “the part you don’t see, but you walk over in places, when you go to the Gallows. The person we’ll be escorting out should be out here soon, so we won’t have to go into the area where they keep the mages.”

She nodded, and as his eyes adjusted to the light he could see her gnawing her lip, either nervously or impatiently or both.

It wasn’t long before the sound of footsteps made both of them tense, but there was no sound of plate armor clanging. Maybe not templars, then.

“Ummm..” a quiet voice whispered.

Anders lit a magelight on his finger and found an pale, apprehensive face looking at him. It looked feminine, but it never paid to assume, with short dirty blond hair and light blue eyes. Fairly young too.

“Are you--” it asked, but Anders put his finger over his mouth.

“It’s better if you don’t know us very well, and we don’t know you very well, on the off chance that one of us gets caught,” he explained gently.

The young mage shuddered at the thought as her mind took it to the next logical step and nodded firmly.

"Understood," the mage murmured, their voice not giving much as to gender away either.

"Come on, follow us," Anders instructed, motioning with his hand and turning around. The three of them crept slowly, as quickly as they possibly could without stomping or making too much noise.

"So," Veena asked after a brief silence, "what happened? Did they hurt you?"

"No," their charge said quietly, barely audibly, "one of the templars tried to... but I didn't... I fought, I bit her and pulled her helmet off and pulled her hair and scratched her face, and they claimed I attacked first and..."

Anders could sense Veena tensing next to him. She would get used to it soon enough, all the stories. They were all equally awful. The whole point of getting these people out of the Circle was that they were not safe in it. No mage was safe in any Circle, of course, but these people... they were in more immediate danger, and it was usually ugly.

"So they were going to punish you, for defending yourself?" Veena hissed, and outrage and disbelief in her voice was palatable.

"The templars can pretty much do anything they want to us, and their word is believed over ours. Always."

Anders felt it was better for Veena to hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak. She knew that he had been in the Circle, but sometimes he wondered if she believed him, or if she thought he was exaggerating. The Ferelden Circle, in comparison to the Kirkwall one, had been a walk in the park. Well, with the exception of the solitary confinement, but he suspected that in Kirkwall, he would have been made tranquil at about his third attempt at running away.

"So what would they do to you for biting a templar?" Veena's voice suggested she wasn't quite sure she wanted to know.

"I don't... I don't know..."

"The crime isn't so much biting her, I suspect," Anders spoke up, not bothering to hide the bitterness in his voice, "so much as denying her what she wanted."

"I just know that... sometimes, if you've not gone through your Harrowing and they don't like you... you don't make it."

"I... I've never been through a Harrowing," Veena admitted, quietly, almost guiltily, like she was realizing every moment how utterly lucky she was to have made it as long as she did as an apostate, "do they tamper with it? Make it harder?"

"I-- I don't know," the young mage responded as they turned a dark, damp corner and started to head up the stairs. "I-- I've only heard about the Harrowing. That it's difficult, that many never make it and have to be killed by the Templars or die in the Fade-- I've seen others choose to be made Tranquil because of the rumors alone."

Anders held back a comment. He was sure the Templars tried to encourage those decisions, and the rumors that caused them.

"My Harrowing was not bad," he said quietly, "difficult, yes, but not impossible, and I was not... am not the bravest of people. I'm sure many who make the choice to become Tranquil would have done just fine if they had tried."

"I'm sure the templars do nothing to discourage them," Veena whispered, and there was a fury under those words that almost made Anders uneasy, though it pleased Justice. She understood, and was properly outraged. This was a step forward. But she was impulsive and temperamental, likely to do something rash. Rash things needed to be done however, when people were being coerced, subtly and not so subtly, into giving up their autonomy. He shook his head and tried to focus on the way ahead, as he was the only one who knew it.

"Turn to your right," he told both Veena and the mage, who he suspected was a girl. He would consider her she, for the moment, until proven otherwise. To his pleasure both of them turned quickly, with no hesitation.

"No, keep going straight-- this is going to be a long run, I have people waiting on the Wounded Coast," he warned them, but there were no complaints from either of his companions.

"So do you think maybe they'd try to intimidate you into choosing Tranquility?" Veena asked after some walking, coming back to the former topic.

"Maybe. I wouldn't, though," she responded, and Anders found himself liking her for the determination he heard in her voice.

"They could tamper with it other ways," he interjected after a moment's thought, "it's usually only the First Enchanter and a lot of templars in case it goes wrong, and they could easily claim it went wrong even though it didn't. If you take too long, they assume you've become possessed. They could easily claim you took too long..."

"And that's why we got you out of there!" Veena said quickly, reaching over to pat the teenager in the back, "won't give the bastards a chance to lie."

They were silent for a long time after that.


End file.
